


and soon will all turn grey

by interestinggin



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Casual Gendered Slurs, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestinggin/pseuds/interestinggin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is not an alcoholic. An alcoholic has a problem. </p><p>And Charles, numbed by years and fire, has no problems, no worries, no fears. Charles has nothing left to care about at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and soon will all turn grey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Synekdokee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synekdokee/gifts).



> Of all the fanfiction I have written, this one comes closest to home. 
> 
> **Warnings for alcohol abuse and all the associated depression, being a jerk to your loved ones, and health issues.**

(no colour left but black or white)  
 **and soon will all turn grey**

 

The ice in the glass numbs the back of his throat, the first time he takes a sip. He is thirteen at the time and far too young for it; it makes his head swim and his skin buzz and tingle. And it makes the voices that he still does not understand dim, and it makes him feel so very alive.

It’s odd how fire and ice can be the same thing sometimes.

And how sometimes your saviour can be your gaoler too.

 

The first time Raven saw Charles come home drunk was when he was seventeen. She thought it was hilarious and helped him into bed; pulled his trousers off and even made sure to get the sick out of the carpet before his mum saw. He’d been out with friends, had smoked a bit and drunk a bit and it had all gone a bit wrong. The next day brought dark glasses, and fried food, and so much teasing that he pinched her.

The second time was when she came over to join him in Oxford, and that evening they went out to celebrate. They both had too much wine, but Charles, first in everything, went that little bit too far. She rolled her eyes, and asked what filthy habits he’d picked up in this country; tucked him into bed with endearments and admonishments, and slept on the sofa in a fairly drunk state of her own.

The third time was the next evening.

And the evening after that.

And the evening after that.

(And the evening after that.)

 

“How the fuck, exactly how the fuck do you have a right to be this pious, Raven? You are not my mother. You’re not my girlfriend. You’re not anyone who has a fucking right to dicate my life, to moralise to me, to fucking lecture me on my fucking behaviour. I don’t have a problem, Raven. I’m the fucking genius here, I’d know if I had a problem. It’s one drink, for fuck’s sake. It’s been a long day and I am trying to write this damn thing and Mum rang again and you don’t have any idea, any idea what it is like to be a damn grown-up for once, do you? You’re just a child. So don’t try and be the parent here. God forbid you should take any responsibility, when there’s so much moral high ground waiting for you to sprawl on.

I think I’ve earned myself a goddamn whisky and coke, thank you very fucking much.”

 

Charles comes to with his head on the desk and a cigarette still burning in between his fingers, fizzling out to nothing. Someone has put a saucer underneath it to act as an ashtray, although his mouth feels as though it has done the job as well.

“Charles,” says Raven, and he looks up to see her tired eyes looking into his, her face pinched and cold and oh so weary, and he wants to be sick, which he blames on the vodka and not at all on the guilt.

“Is there coffee?” he asks, because there is nothing else that he can say that would make the damnest difference except lies, and he is not yet gone that far into cruelty.

“You’re a cunt when you’re drunk,” says Raven, over him. He flinches at the word, feels it spread across his cheek like a bruise, shameful and inflamed, and wonders what on earth he said to merit it.

She pushes the coffee into his hands. It spills with the force and scalds his pale fingers, but he doesn’t feel it.

“I don’t care,” she says, her voice shaking, “if you want to drink yourself into an early grave. But that’s the last time I’m - cleaning up your puke or wiping your arse or sitting up for hours making sure you don’t light a cigarette and burn the house down. That’s the last time you call me names, Charles. The last time.”

 

It isn’t the last time.

The last time never comes.

 

Raven doesn’t cry any more, because when you have screamed yourself hoarse until your throat is bleeding and your eyes are red raw with tears, and all the good it has done is to make him defensive and vicious and crying, what, in the end, is the point? So she closes her eyes to it, smiles and says that everyone likes a drink to wind down of an evening, and oh these students, what are they like? And she goes to bed early, leaving him alone to his work and the ever present glass on the table, the third sibling, the one who will never leave home, and drowns her own sorrows in dreams.

Charles pretends he believes her. It is easier than caring, and the whisky, after all, hasn’t judged him yet.

 

Erik finds Charles slumped in a study armchair on the third night in the house, and it’s the first time Charles has passed out in months, though of course he cannot know that; this stranger in the dark.

“Charles,” he says, concerned, and then there are rough hands shaking Charles awake, half panicked, and a voice screaming in his head _please be okay, oh fuck, what happened, Charles, don’t be dead_.

“Get off,” Charles slurs, “I’m not dying, for god’s sake, I’m sleeping.”

“Go to bed then,” says Erik, regaining his breath, a little embarrassed by the display of emotion.

“Are you always this worried when people take a nap?”

Erik sniffs. Charles can hear the thoughts starting to form, treacherous little murmurs of mistrust whispering in his head. Erik can smell it on his breath, can hear the slurring at the end of the words, the slightly lower pitch to the voice.

“Charles,” says Erik slowly, “you’re drunk.”

“Yes,” says Charles, too exhausted to argue, to hopelessly deny it, to excuse something that doesn’t need an excuse or reason, “well, I’m tired.”

 

Breakfast is toast and marmalade and two aspirin with his tea.

The drinking won’t start until noon, most days, but it needs to be enough to make the voices silent.

This is the trouble with being a telepath; how can you be sure what is real and what is not?

 

“Charles, Hank wants to talk about Cere…” starts Erik, entering the room in a whip of energy and fury and all of the hate in the world simmering under that mask of calm, and then he stops dead like ice, freezes with his eyes on Charles, curiosity and fear fighting to be foremost in his gaze.

“What are you doing?” he asks, though he knows full well.

“Nothing,” says Charles, pushing the bottle back into the cabinet.

“It’s eleven in the morning,” says Erik.

“Yes,” says Charles, “I’ve got my own watch, thank you, my friend. Surely you came to tell me something other than that?”

Erik’s mouth is heavy, and his words lie like dust on his tongue. “Yes,” he mutters, “Hank wanted to see you.”

“Right,” says Charles, and the tips of his ears are pink, and his face is a little flushed, and he stammers for a moment. “Thank you. Tell him - tell him I’ll be out in a second.”

Every nerve in Erik’s whole body tells him not go.

But then there is a voice like music and home whispering in his head, and it says _you saw nothing, but nothing at all_ , and he smiles with all his teeth and leaves Charles to make his own brand of peace.

 

It’s been many years since those first days, when Charles would have been the first to admit he had a problem. The days of heads in toilets and horrible splitting migraines every day. Now he has it much more under control; only the slightest ache in the mornings, only the slightest of pains.

Nowadays, it’s not a burning need, but an itch, almost a tick, almost, even, a shiver.

Barely even there at all.

 

“How long has he been like this?” Erik asks Raven one evening, as Charles heads up the stairs in front of them to set up the chessboard.

She looks at him and smiles. “Oh, all his life,” she laughs, “I don’t think Oxford did much for him, to be honest, but he was never going to be the cool one. I think he was born to mother.”

“No,” Erik hisses, “that’s not what I mean.”

Her blue eyes hold nothing but truth. “What do you mean?”

“The drinking,” he says bluntly.

She raises both eyebrows high into her hair; higher than they could go, if she couldn’t move them by a magic all her own. “What on earth are you talking about?” she asks, her voice unusually light and cheery, and so brittle it might snap.

She has watched her brother vanish already, though Erik cannot yet know it; in her mind, at least, she has said goodbye for good. She has broken down the barrier of hope and come out the other side into a numbness of her own. “Goodnight, Erik. See you in the morning, I’m sure.”

 

“Can’t you see,” Erik blazes, “that you’re destroying yourself?”

Charles’ hands do not tremble as he pours another glass; he has a calm that only half a bottle can provide. “You’re being dreadfully rude,” he murmurs, “and your shouting’s going to wake the children.”

“How long? How long have you been addicted like this?” Erik demands.

“I’m not addicted,” Charles snaps, “don’t be ridiculous.”

“Of course you are,” says Erik, his voice dismissive, “I’m amazed it’s taken me this long to notice.”

“You didn’t notice because there’s nothing to notice. You’re blowing this out of proportion.”

“And you haven’t gone a day since I met you without a drink,” Erik scowls.

“I like a drink,” sighs Charles, “that doesn’t make me an alcoholic, for god’s sake. You should see Raven on the weekends.”

“How long?” repeats Erik, his voice a little louder.

“Erik-”

“How long?” he repeats, shouting now.

“Fuck off, alright?” snaps Charles, spinning round to glare at him, the whisky in his hand spilling into the rug, “Just fuck off out of it.”

“How-”

“Erik,” Charles yells at the top of his voice, and then in Erik’s head he hears nothing, only silence, only the silence where a mother’s love should be. There is nothing but the taste of gin mingling with the salt of tears on his tongue, and he can feel an emptiness gnawing at his insides. A slap across his face leaves him reeling, staring up at this great brute of a man so much older than he himself, and he feels weak and young and useless, and so lonely his heart is going to burst. He feels it grow, and hears all of the voices whispering hate and bile and heartache in his ears, in his mind, in his heart and soul and everywhere, and all he can do, young and broken and unable to control it, is clench his hands over his ears, plunge himself into a bottle and wait for the screaming to stop.

He comes to crumpled on the floor, and there are tear tracks staining his face. Charles is slumped against a table, half-unconscious with the effort of tearing himself from Erik’s mind, pressing his fingers into the wood like it’s a lifeline, like it’s the only thing keeping him in this world at all. The glass has shattered on the floor.

“You think,” Erik spits, “that this _whinging_ make me feel sorry for you? _Me_?”

“No,” says Charles, in a whisper, his eyes closed.

“You’re pathetic, Charles,” Erik snaps, pulling himself to his feet. “You need help, for god’s sake.”

“We’ve all got demons, Erik,” Charles says, and with an effort he snaps himself back to reality, tears his eyes open and stares Erik right in the face. “Not all of us are lucky enough to be able to name ours.”

“Ask me for help and I’ll give it,” says Erik, so quietly Charles can hardly hear. His fingers brush against Charles’ own, skin on skin.

For a moment, it looks like Charles is relenting. For a moment, the heat of Erik’s hands breaks through the ice of his own; the fire melts, becomes the same, the burning in the back of his throat so real again. And then he yanks his hand away.

“I don’t need help,” he hisses, “but I’ll be sure to let you know if I do. Thank you ever so much for asking.”

 

He’s numb, and getting there shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.

He likens it, in his own mind, to a burn. It hurts like hell, stings and blisters and makes you feel sick in the pit of your stomach, makes you weak and woozy, and then you hold it under the cold water and wait, wait while it freezes and peels and the poison seeps away, until eventually you can’t feel it any more.

Until eventually

you can’t feel

anything

anything at all.

 

When not feeling anything becomes the state of normality, at least in his legs, the irony does not go unnoticed by him. He cannot help but feel unbalanced, so alive and energetic in one half, his mind free to wander and control anything he choses, his frame so stupidly limited and destroyed.

The sense of unbalance is disturbing, so he opts to balance it out.

Not feeling anything anywhere makes much more sense, anyway.

 

“You’re still at it, then,” says Magneto, many years in the future, when they play yet another game of chess, and the Professor reaches for a hipflask to help him think in a pivotal moment; by instinct, on autopilot, the taste of the grain hits his tongue and lets him pretend he is alive.

“Don’t start, Erik, for god’s sake,” he sighs, and Erik smiles politely and gestures back to the board. It’s easier not to care, when you can’t hear the cries of pain; it’s easier to hurt them, when you’ve found a way to block it out.

This is something they have both found, in their own way. In their own time. In the years that they have had to waste away to this, these leaders of men, these creatures of habit and fear.

They both have their demons.

And neither of them choose to name them now.


End file.
